Travel: Montreal has a summer festival for every taste

MONTREAL— Festivals in Montreal are a lot like buses. It seems there’s one along every few minutes.

OK, maybe it just seems like that when there are roughly three dozen festivals between now and the fall, with the intensity ratcheting up during the busy — and tourist-driven — summer season.

There’s virtually a festival for every taste — music, theatre, arts, even food.

The crown jewels are the world-renowned Montreal International Jazz Festival and the Just For Laughs International Comedy Festival.

Both of the hugely popular events are into their third decade and stretch over weeks instead of the days that are offered by most events.

The jazz festival is already teasing some of the names that will be on this year’s roster, confirming that music legends Aretha Franklin and Wynton Marsalis will appear during the June 28-July 7 fest.

Just For Laughs will announce its lineup shortly.

The Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival is poised for its April 22 launch, bringing together an international buffet of scribes from 15 countries for an event that is as much about socializing as it is about substance.

“We’re not stuffy, we’re not here to pat ourselves on the back about how smart we are,” says Gregory McCormick, director of programming for the 15-year-old festival, which runs until April 28.

“We’re just here to entertain people and have people meet new friends.”

Indeed, he says it’s not unusual for the events to spill over into the bars and cafes as people digest what they’ve heard in panels and presentations.

“It becomes a conversation about a writer, about a book, about a topic and I think that’s what we’re really after.”

McCormick points out that while there are ongoing predictions about the death of the print medium, people are still reading and more books are being sold than ever before.

“It’s just the platforms through which we get them that are changing,” he said.

McCormick says the festival aims to appeal to as many people as possible.

“We have stuff for people who are really into fiction, whether they’re younger readers or older readers, we have events for non-fiction readers, we have events for poets, we have events for people interested in the arts in general.”

The festival is reaching out to people through a series of events revolving around specific issues, such as mental health and how it is presented in literature, and gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender writing.

One event that is generating a lot of buzz is the presentation of the $10,000 Blue Metropolis Literary Grand Prix to Irish author Colm Toibin.

McCormick said tickets are going fast for the ceremony and discussion with Toibin, who is the best-selling author of The Master, Brooklyn, and the hotly debated The Testament of Mary, about the life of Jesus Christ.

Over at Just For Laughs, activity is heating up as it prepares for its summer rollout.

While the earliest event, the French-language play Un homme, deux patrons, begins June 12, the slate of festival shows in English begins in earnest on July 10 with the popular Ethnic Show. The comedy onslaught of themed shows, free shows and galas continues until July 28.

Bruce Hills, the festival’s chief operating officer, says spreading out Just for Laughs came as a response to festival-goers who said they were overwhelmed by having the event crammed into 10 days. However, the bulk of the festival will still take place between July 13 and 28.

Just For Laughs organizers have given the event a hard look in the last few years and rethought how it does everything from presenting shows to marketing to exploiting multimedia platforms. Hills says that’s put it in its best shape ever.

He points out part of the revamp was making ticket prices more customer-friendly.

“You can come here and not have a lot of money and buy a passport or buy a handful of tickets to our fringey-type events and get out of a weekend for $50,” Hills said.

Passports go for around $119.

Hills said while the festival is primarily a standup comedy festival, it has featured a significant amount of musical comedy and theatre and targeted breakout stars who have attracted heavy attention from the large industry contingent that is present every year.